


Three Lives

by Glory_Jean



Series: Hope [5]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Family, Fix-It, Fluff and Angst, Post Episode: s02e13 Doomsday, Time Babies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-08-17
Updated: 2008-08-17
Packaged: 2017-12-04 13:55:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/711485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glory_Jean/pseuds/Glory_Jean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Perhaps humans have regenerations too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three Lives

**Author's Note:**

> Part of my babyfic series, Hope. AU post doomsday, post reunion
> 
> Beta reader:[](http://bananasandroses.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://bananasandroses.livejournal.com/) **bananasandroses**  
>  ____________________________________________________________________

A man travels the world over in search of what he needs, and returns home to find it.  
\-- George Moore

 

 

I

The sun rises, filling the room with light. Another day on an alien Earth dawns just as it has since Rose Tyler died. But death, like time, seems to be relative. She is dead in her universe of birth and alive in one where she never existed. It makes little sense. Fortunately, she had given up on the concept of sense the moment she ran into a magic box and entered a world of fairy tales.

This is not the life she'd planned, but the universes failed to consult her. She was cast into purgatory when she was meant to live with her lonely angel amongst the stars. Now all she can do is rebuild from the debris. She understands how he felt – her new, new doctor – when he said he didn't know what kind of man he was. She doesn't even know how to live in this house, with its unchanging walls; and this world – a mirror image of a place she has long since outgrown.

Her mother's eyes plead with her to try, to learn serenity. Part of her desperately wants to feel rooted to this one spot by her family's soothing influence. But all Rose can feel is the heaviness of her womb and she knows that she will always be connected to _his_ universe by ties not even the void can break.

 

II

It seems almost anticlimactic and more than a little surreal. All those months of waiting and worrying – over in a few short hours. Now she holds the object of all that worry, and finds an average- looking baby after all. Well, average aside from the fact the child is hers. _Hers_. It feels like the most ridiculous thing in the world that soon she will be allowed to take this tiny girl home with her to keep.

She keeps her eyes on the minute details of this new life – perfect miniature fingers, hair that is dark, and already unruly – and avoids looking at the form sitting beside her with the blank line needing a name. She feels unequal to the task. This child will never be ordinary, regardless of how she appears to be precisely that. She is proof that the last two years were not a dream. Rose's fear of forgetting fades as her daughter gazes at her with _his_ eyes.

She has lost so much of herself. Her heart has been so empty, she often feels like the most important part of her had died, and she is being forced to live with the lack of it. But looking at this tiny child, she finds something she thought was lost to her.

So she names her for the one thing she has left.

Hope.

 

III

 

She sits, numb, on Hope's bed; a doll clutched in her hands. Years of Torchwood training scream in her head; lists of procedures and protocols she should be following. There are people to notify and a mountain of paperwork to shuffle. But tonight she is not an agent – she is a mother – and the only she thought she can hold on to is _not again_. The audible alarm sounds, but she doesn't stir until small, soft hands touch her cheeks.

And then she's there – no, _they_ are there – and Rose nearly slides to the floor in shock. She wants to kiss him and hug him and slap him (this latest incident is obviously all _his_ fault) but all she can do is smile.

 

 

IV

Sometimes she feels almost normal.

They are planet bound for the moment and she's just another mum herding kids through the shops (the feeling remains as long as she doesn't glance too long at the blue-skinned shop keeper). They are undeniably hers, this between-tantrums toddler and a moody tween hovering somewhere between childhood and the first bloom of womanhood.

It seems so odd, so impossible that she could be _here_ – like this – right now. She hears her mother's voice from so long ago, predicting she would be someone else – someone not Rose – on a far off alien world. She feels a moment of surreal panic, wondering whose life it is she has stepped into and when she will wake. Lifting her head, she sees her children – sister lifting brother to let him gaze at some trinkets that have caught his attention.

Tears sting her eyes and the moment passes. _No_ , she tells herself fiercely, _this is good_. This is right. She discards her mother's words. Jackie always did fear change.

But Rose has changed so much: died, been reborn, come back to life. She thinks she knows what it is to regenerate – twice. Like him, she's now a creature of memory, knowing both the person she was when they met and the person who survived day to day on Pete's world are gone. She can remember living those lives, but she will never be that Rose again. So much change in so few years is enough to weigh anyone down. She can only worry about this moment -– this reality -– and let the future worry about itself. But she knows one thing for certain:

She intends to make this life _last_.


End file.
